ABOUT 1st & Main
OUR VISION
Our hope is that each project we execute plays a pivotal role in shaping the vitality and future success of its downtown, while helping to achieve the economic development goals of the local government.
Our Approach
1st & Main’s development approach is driven by our desire to work on projects that have a positive and transformative impact on the surrounding community. We begin each project by understanding the local context, including the identification of community stakeholders and relevant public interests. This involves a significant amount of coordination and communication in partnership with local officials, residents, financial institutions, business leadership and philanthropic sources. For each project, we assemble a custom team of development partners and consultants to execute projects that maximize value while controlling costs and contributing to the common good.
We offer something different from most of today’s urban real estate efforts, which are primarily focused on the bottom line, resulting in a product that lacks quality, character, and connection to the existing urban fabric.
Our Work
1st & Main has extensive experience developing large-scale, mixed-use projects in urban settings. Often, our projects focus on iconic properties or sites with deep historical context and connection to the surrounding community. These properties often have a storied past and require special consideration when thinking about the end product. Most of these projects have been public-private partnerships involving creative financing methods, including historic tax credits, New Markets Tax Credits, tax-incremental financing, Brownfields Tax Incentives, and many others. Our team’s ability to leverage these innovative financing tools is a critical component to addressing the challenges of many of our projects and achieving positive results where others have failed. In collaboration with our partners, our capabilities encompass the complete life cycle of a real estate project including master planning, market and site analysis.
Meet the team
RORY DOWLING, PRINCIPAL
Rory’s real estate experience has focused primarily on urban, mixed-use projects involving public – private partnerships and unique financing techniques. Rory has gained significant experience in structuring public – private partnerships through his work overseeing the Hay Street Master Development in downtown Fayetteville, NC that includes the adaptive reuse of the historic Prince Charles Hotel, a 482-sapce parking garage, and planned 212-unit Stadium View Apartments surrounding the new minor league baseball stadium. Rory is also working with Fairfield County, SC to transform the historic Mt. Zion Institute School into a county complex. As Development Advisor to the Development Finance Initiative (an extension of the UNC School of Government), Rory has managed over $200M of redevelopment including the adaptive reuse of two prominent historic structures into hotels, master developing 20-acres of riverfront property for a mixed-use town center, and the adaptive reuse of an historic hotel into graduate student housing above retail.
Rory received a dual master’s degree from UNC Chapel Hill in Business and City & Regional Planning and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Washington & Lee University. He lives with his wife and two children in Durham, NC.